The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Tuesday selected a contractor to provide identity theft protection to the 22.1 million Americans affected by the cyber attack on its computer systems two months after the Obama administration acknowledged the breach.
OPM and the Department of Defense gave the three-year, $133 million contract to Identity Theft Guard Solutions, also known as ID Experts, according to The Hill.
At the end of this month, DoD will embark on a weeks-long process of sending notifications to individuals impacted by the breach, meaning that some individuals who had personal information stolen will not be notified of the fact until November.
November will mark four months since OPM admitted the size of the computer breach.
ID Experts will provide credit monitoring, identity monitoring, identity theft insurance, and identity restoration services to those who had their information stolen. Many of the 22.1 individuals affected by the breach work for the federal government.
The Obama administration initially projected that the contract would be awarded around Aug. 14. The announcement Tuesday marked nearly two months since OPM acknowledged the massive breach.
According to NextGov, the true cost to taxpayers will be about $330 million.
"We remain fully committed to assisting the victims of these serious cyber crimes and to taking every step possible to prevent the theft of sensitive data in the future," said OPM acting director Beth Cobert.
The former OPM director, Katherine Archuleta, resigned a day after the agency admitted to the cyber attack, which is believed to have been carried out by Chinese sources.